How to save the U.S. Postal Service

Jeff Jacoby

The Boston Globe

“Email isn’t killing the U.S. Postal Service,” said Jeff Jacoby. Inefficiency is. The Postal Service has announced that in order to make up for the drop in mail volume and revenue caused by the Internet, it’s shutting about half of its mail-processing centers, and ending next-day delivery. But while email might have made business tougher, it can’t be blamed for most of the USPS’s woes. After all, its private rivals UPS and FedEx are flourishing. “Why? Because they have something the post office lacks: competitors.”

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Unlike the post office, which has a monopoly on letter delivery, FedEx and UPS have had to compete for customers by boosting quality and holding prices down. Today, labor accounts for just 32 percent of FedEx’s budget, compared with 82 percent at the USPS. If we really want to halt the post office’s miserable decline, we need to throw open mail delivery to the private sector. “And only when the Postal Service is accountable—only when its customers are free to take their business elsewhere—will the endless round of excuses and losses and service reductions finally come to an end.”